Mottai Boss

No, this is not the Sivaji “mottai” boss I am talking about. This mottai is known to Tamils all over the world. He has mesmerized them with his notes. Yes I am talking about Isaignani Illayaraja, “mottai” for those who love him and the Big Boss of music to me. Any number of ARR, Harris, Himesh and others can pitch in and provide good music to our ears but it is Illayaraja who can give life to a movie. The greatest hits that Tamil cinema has seen over the years include Nayagan, Anajali, Thalapathi, Mouna Ragam and many more and IR has played a very important role in their success. I am not talking about the songs alone, it is the BGM he has scored for these movies.

When it comes to Mouna Ragam who can forget the famous BGM played whenever karthik does some naughty thing and the same BGM played slowly can bring tears to your eyes (when karthik dies). Karthik comes out after getting beaten up by the police, revathi looks on…there goes the slower tone of the BGM with violins…Then karthik winks his eyes and runs away…same BGM in a faster note…Audience in all smiles..

And Nayagan? Well “Thenpandi Cheemayilae” is still one of my favorite song and that’s an evergreen BGM anyone would have listened to…

Its first the chorus, then the big violin (don’t know the exact name, you have to place it on the floor to play it) and then few more violins…Maniratnam has no dialogues for the scene and with this music the audience understands what the kid feels in Anjali and the agony of the parents.

The same big violin music is still ringing in my ears from the court scene of “Padikkadhavan” when sivaji sitting as a judge comes to know about his brothers. Who can forget the first computer music in “Punnagai Mannan”. The love theme song is undoubtedly one of the best theme music ever produced and it is still famous.

The “Chinnathayaval” song from Thalapthi which in itself is a great one, when used as a BGM whenever Rajini sees his mother…can’t get any better.

Going to a registrar office only to find out that he is going to be a witness of the marriage of his love, Kamal gives an awesome performance in Aboorva Sagodharargal…and when his mother argues to Mouli saying the girl has not married a disabled person, kamal’s expression changes and starts walking away…Behind these scenes its IR who is doing the magic with this violins. Another unforgettable BGM…

There are 100s of such BGM’s we can talk about. And I don’t have to talk about his songs. Rakkama Kaiya Thattu from the movie Thalapathi was amongst the songs listed in a BBC World Top Ten music poll. I think that says it all. Gifted are those Violins, flutes and the pianos…

I think we have not given the right amount of recognition for this genius. If I am not wrong, he has been given national award only once (for Sindhu Bhairavi) and I feel he deserves a lot more. With today’s technology it is probably pretty much easy to compose with multi track recording where you can first record the male voice, then the female voice and then the music part and later mix them up. Imagine IR’s days where every one needs to be present in the studio, be in sync and finish off a song in a stretch. That takes a lot of talent, co-ordination and patience too.

He is scoring for very few movies these days but he sings in his son’s(Yuvan) movies. I just want him to live longer so that I can at least listen to his voices, if not his scores.

ATM

That’s Azhagiya Tamizh Magan, the Vijay flicker getting released for this Diwali. The songs were out last week and the music is by ARR. On the first hearing I liked couple of songs. There is this “Marlyn Monroe Cloning-a” which is a good peppy number and its sung really well. I think the voice is a new one and it sounds nice. I am addicted to the way ARR uses bass guitar in his songs and this one too got added in my fav list. When the first stanza of this song starts, the lyrics goes like “Kadarkaraiyil beach house irukku…”. The way it was sung is too good; the singer breaks the word and gives a soft touch.

The next song is a remix of “Pon Magal Vandhaal…”. It’s a remix season and “Vasandha mullai” was a great hit in Pokkiri. So probably going by the trend Vijay wanted a remix in this one too. And ARR does it neat. The beat is good and the song has a rap part too. Actually you get to here only few lines of the original song and a whole lot of rap included in it and the entire song is just about three and a half minutes. I don’t know if ARR’s new interest is in rap. He has used a new rapper, not Blaaze this time.

There is a song sung by ARR himself and my guess is it would be the opening song for Vijay. It goes like “Ella pugazhum oruvan oruvanukkae…”. It starts with a heavy guitar tone on similar lines with Bryan Adam’s Summer of ’69 but a different variant. When I heard that guitar part I could map it to Summer of 69 immediately. But then ARR uses that throughout the song. Although I liked the initial part of the song, I quite didn’t like the finish. It was like a typical ARR style, where suddenly the pitch of the song comes down and then ARR would sing in top of his voice. In my opinion, ARR is very stereotype on this format and probably is obsessed with it.

These are the three numbers I liked immediately. And since its ARR, one would have to listen to other songs couple of more times to start liking and appreciate it. So let me listen to them more and I am eager to see how these three songs are shot in the movie; especially the Marlyn Monroe song.

Shhhhh….

For me that’s the short form of “Satham Podadhey“… 🙂 This latest flick from director Vasanth definitely is a silent hit amongst the recent releases. An off beat movie from the regular mass hero subjects, this one is a thriller. You don’t feel the thrill in the first half of the movie. It starts with an alcoholic marrying a girl and shows no interest in sexual life. The girl and the family think it is just a typical arranged marriage problem that could be solved without taking any extreme steps. But as time passes, they come to know that the guy is actually impotent because of excess alcohol intake. They also come to know about the arrogance inside the guy when he beats the girl and starts torturing her. All these leads to a divorce and the girl separates from the guy. Probably now you would be wondering sitting in the theatre if it is going to be another sentimental Tamil movie.

The girl shifts to her brother’s place for a change and there enters Prithiviraj, the smart software professional with lots of sense of humor (isn’t it contradictory :D) and who displays a character. These two start going around and they marry. They both land in Kochi for Prithivi’s one week assignment and in a strange encounter Prithivi meets the girl’s ex-husband. The ex-husband kidnaps the girl, keeps her in a sound proof room and plans such that others believe the girl died in a gas leakage incident in her house. While Prithivi and others believe that the girl actually died in the accident, this guy tortures her in that sound proof room. Did Prithivi rescue the girl? What happened to this psychopathic guy? is the rest of the story.

The film has limited number of characters and every one plays their role well. Prithivi excels in that smart character role with his sense of humor. The soft spoken guy would definitely be liked by girls. Padmapriya and the psycho (Chennai-28 guy) do their job really well. But I liked three more people in the movie. They are Vasanth, Yuvan and the camera person. Vasanth has taken a difficult subject which could have been a disaster even with couple of wrongly chosen dialogues and scenes. But he gave a thriller with message out of this subject. Giving a thriller out of this subject would definitely be a difficult task and he has done it really well. The screenplay is damn good and he keeps the audience to the seat, especially in the second half.

Music definitely should be good for a thriller and Yuvan does it neat. I am sure he has improved a lot over the years and the climax of this movie speaks for it. There is no dialogue for the last 15 minutes or so and it is just the visuals and BGM that keeps the audience tight. The songs are good on its own but I would blame Vasanth for placing it at the wrong points in the movie. Though they are good numbers, especially “Azhagu Kutti Chellam“, “Oh Indha Kaathal” and “Paesugiraen“, they irritate you when they appear all of a sudden without any relevance. I was wondering how great it would have been if it was a 2 hours thriller without any song sequences. It could have been a good attempt and probably could take Tamil cinema to next levels.

The camera person did a pretty good job with the lenses. The lush green scenes in “Oh Indha Kaathal“, some 100 odd smiles of kids in “Azhagu Kutty“, the long bridge, old buildings of Kochi instead of traditional Kochi port definitely needs a mention. In one scene where the psycho tortures the heroine, the camera just stays in the hall at one position. There would be no frame where the psycho beats the heroine. But there would be shadows of heroine going around the house, plates and cups getting scattered. A different try where the audience would feel the gravity of the situation without actually seeing it.

Overall a different Tamil cinema, a thriller showing bad effects of alcohol and neatly packaged. It definitely shows the kind of experience and maturity Vasanth has got over the years.

Stinkara Chennai

Well, Madras became Chennai and the mission was to make it “Singara” Chennai, something comparable to Singapore. I am not sure whether that mission is still in place and we would be alive to see that day, but I am sure, as of today, we can call it as “Stinkara” Chennai. The seven or so years of contract wtih CES Onyx, the Singapore based Waste Management company expired on 25th August and ever since Chennai streets were full of garbage. Garbage piled up in most part of the city and it was definitely stinking for the whole of past one week. Add to that, the intermittent rains worsened the condition. And the reason given by the Mayor is that the next contractor; Neel Metals; was not fully equipped to handle the situation.

Such a statement from the Mayor just means that whether it is a foreign contract or a work done by the local body, the government engine does not work. Their job is to just sign the contract and go home with all the crores of commission and relax. I think we need to get in to such a stinking situation to appreciate the kind of work Onyx had done all these years. They were just too professional for these guys I believe. When the contract got over on 25th of August, Onyx had cleaned up the garbage of that day also. Meaning next day it was a clean city for the Neels. Is it not the duty of the corporation to see if the transition from one contractor to the other has happened or not? And whether the next guy can pitch in and handle some 1600T of garbage daily?

Garbage collection is not something new to have such kind of fallback. Since day one government is cleaning streets and handling the waste management. If you can call the garbage collection, segregation, disposal as an industry by itself, then it is definitely not an immature one. When we take any work, be it a bank, some PSU job or an IT, whenever some one is relieved of the work, a proper transition phase would be planned where the next guy comes and works in parallel and gets trained on the job. Why is this not done in garbage collection? There are 3 zones in the city that Onyx handled. The corporation should have given a zone for Neels to take care while Onyx oversee the operation and give feedback. Onyx should have handled the other two zones so that there is not much of a backlog in the garbage clearance.

Apart from the commission that goes to the politicians, I do not see a necessity to outsource the garbage handling to some foreign company. Can’t the corporation import all these compactors and bins and handle the garbage by itself? This is not some rocket science we are dealing with. Some simple processes which when followed effectively would do the trick. And the main problem with all these contract switching glitch is lack of something which no one can teach; its common sense.

Way to go…

The school kids look for the chocolates they would get, the young fellas would throng the cinema halls, office goers want to take a day break and relax, and a vast majority would spend their time watching the varied entertainment programs aired in different T.V channels. A few portion of the population wake up to see the parade. Yeah, this is how the Independence day is celebrated in India.

This year we would be stepping on to the 60th year of Independence. 60 years is definitely a long time for a country to show prosperity across sectors. But what do we have India? At one side the booming IT (which is currently worried by the appreciating rupee!!), telecom, retail and real estate industries which increased the spending power of middle class. On the other side we still have farmers committing suicide, poors still don’t have access to basic needs, female infanticide, corruption at every level, states fighting for water, states in havoc due to floods, etc, etc…

Well, we would have a lot of things to complain right from the very traffic and transport systems to everything else in this country. At the same time we should be able to realize that we are free to complain at least. Currently the historic nuclear deal is the hot topic in the political system of the country. While the current security advisors, scientists of the country welcome the deal and support it one hundred percent, the retired scientists are against it. The left is totally against this and plans to storm the parliament in the winter session. This by all means is freedom, you are able to oppose one of the greatest decisions that is being taken in the country.

We are often compared with countries like China, Singapore, US and others to show the scale of development that has happened. If we take a closer look we are comparing a 1 billion populated country which is democratic, diverse and secular with countries which would fit in only one of these. China has the population but not democratic, US on the other hand doesn’t have the population to this larger scale.

India when we proudly claim with such attributes like democracy, diverse and secular is complex because of these very own attributes. When the Brits left the country and gave the freedom they also left back a corrupt bureaucrats which has spilled over decades and generations and is still prevalent. Right from the day one of independence the scenario has always been “Rich get richer; poor get poorer”. With opening up of the economy and all the booms this country is witnessing now, richer are just getting richest and the poor don’t have a way to go. The real estate prices are going uncontrolled, first it was Mumbai and then it slipped to Bangalore and now other metros are witnessing the new highs in this industry. So who is becoming rich? Definitely not the new home owners, they have their rest of their life slogging out to pay the EMIs. It is the real estate developers who are already rich. And government is still thinking of providing concrete houses for the poor.

Inflation went up to a record high and RBI had to take a lot of measures to keep the prices under control. It hiked up the CRR twice and the banks passed on the burden to its customers; the interest rates increased. Now the other worrying factor is the appreciating rupee!!! If the rupee appreciates we should be proud that we are getting better value for a rupee in the international market. But the boom that has happened was primarily driven by the IT sector which in turn depended heavily on software exports; a heavy dependency on the dollar to rupee conversion factor. Other exports including textile and pharma are also hit because of this.

When news like TATA acquiring a company (Corus) larger than its size and almost in the final phases of acquiring Jaguar would make us feel “Way to go India!!”, we also need to think that the reformation has to occur across various sectors of industries and people and the standard of living of the people has to come up. We need to have more innovation in the country which would drive a whole range of new products. Agriculture should not be a neglected sector where we need to industrialize more to increase the productivity. Energy needs would be of a prime concern for us and acquiring energy safety is the need of the hour. With increasing oil prices and the global warming a key issue to address we need to tap alternate sources of clean energy on a large scale. Some scientists now say that instead of investing heavily on the nuclear energy with this “123 agreement” India needs to invest on the alternate sources of energy like solar, wind, etc… That could be an interesting point for the decision makers to think considering the future.

Today in this flat world it is almost impossible for any country to develop and sustain without depending on others. The development that is happening in our country started with heavy dependency on the dollar prices as all the services that were off-shored were billed in dollars and same with all the exports too. While this is an advantage we could take as a launch pad, slowly we need have fuel to fly the rest of the journey. And that would be the in house innovation, engineering across all sectors. This would result in new range of products and should make the west to depend on us. We need to think really big and come out of this small circle. As of today we have a pretty young nation when compared to others with the average age below or around 30. But this would not be the case for ever. Soon we would have a population which cannot contribute in huge numbers to the economy as these people would get in to their retiring age.

Though we could say “Way to go!!” by looking at some of the reforms that is happening, in terms of becoming a super power, influencing economy with corruption less governance and better standard of living for a billion plus people we still have a long way to go…

So where do I start?

Gifted are those who find at very early ages of their life about what they want to do in life. Even otherwise, if you have some one who finds out your talent and tells you to go in a certain direction, I would say you are lucky. People who fall under these two categories have a clear cut path in their life to travel. In fact they control the way they live rather than life controlling them. They decide what to do at different stages and ages of their life, they do not get distracted from their goal and achieves it finally. Even if not achieved, there would be a sense of satisfaction end of the day on the attempt. Of course there would be some hardships in reaching the destination but they strive towards that.

Well, the other side of the story is about the “I don’t know what I want to do” people. Somehow these people spend most of their life time in searching what they really want to do. During the course some succumb to the so called practical pressures life puts on and they stop their search. They start cribbing about what they are doing (but can’t get out of it also), after some time start adjusting to it and later settle down to it saying “I love what I am doing now” (Read, “I don’t have an option dude”). The remaining crowd keeps searching for what they want to do in life. In a typical middle class Indian scenario, they are most likely to have spent around two decades of their life in doing what the majority of the crowd does. If taking science as major in your higher secondary is what majority do, say “Science is exciting” and enroll for the courses. If the next buzz word is engineering degree, go for the kill…Spend lakhs of money in earning one…”Computers are exciting you know”, “Communication engineering is gonna change the way we live”, “Mechanical engineering is an evergreen field”…You get to say any one of these statements based on the course chosen.

After 4 years of spending time at the college, you don’t have your basics strong, no core engineering skills developed, again you do what the majority of the crowd does…At this time in the country its joining some IT company…And it goes on from there on keep doing what the crowd does…aim high during the first year of job, then slowly start disliking the job, look for promotions every year (doesn’t matter if you haven’t acquired skills for the next role), switch 3 companies in 2 years, slowly decide that you have to be in the managerial line and it goes on…

So when does one break out? As long as there is a comfort factor of staying in a job and getting a minimum 30 grand salary every month, these people belong to the so called elite crowds of the country…the crowd that is driving the economy…the crowd that has the most spending power in the country…Something needs to really hit hard at the person to stop cribbing about the dislikes of the job and start doing what he wants to do…and to find out what he wants to do, the only way out is to do different things I believe…by that way one day or the other he would figure out what his real interest his…but what if that one day is too late…? If at the age of 35 I find that my interest is in cinematography, it could be too late to enter in to that field and be successful…and if I had committed other things in my life I wouldn’t be able to take many risks…

Of course at every time you could develop a liking to what you are currently doing even if that is not the thing you want to do. There is absolutely nothing wrong in that. But I am not sure how much of a satisfaction that would drive in you end of the day. It is just a trade off. I believe it is just about sacrificing your interests (if you have found) or having stopped the search due to some practical difficulties (some other priorities in life).

IIT…

…a dream for so many ambitious students. The top institute in India to study Science and Technology and so many students prepare for years to get in to this. Preparations start as early as Standard 9 and students study for 3-4 years to clear the entrance test. And once you get through, your life changes altogether. You get the best in class education in the country and once you are done with the course you get to work or study in the best company or university.

Well it was never in my dreams to enter in to IIT as a student for I did not hear the name till I was in standard 10 and nobody I ever interacted with even talked about it. I think I understood the seriousness of getting in to IIT only when I got in to engg. college. But in my engg college days my dream for IIT started. Naah, not to do M.Tech or something. One of my closest friend used to live inside the IIT campus and we used to visit him often. No no, he is not an IITian, at least I wouldn’t be having an IITian as my friend (namma range kku…). His dad is a prof there. We used to go there to play volleyball primarily and wow what a huge campus it was.

From the polluted roads of Chennai when you enter the campus after getting a gate pass from the security guard, it is heaven inside. You get to breathe in fresh air which in itself is something great. There are so many trees inside, in fact I guess they have built some buildings inside a forest:) The roads are pretty neat without any pot holes, speed breakers are smooth; not like the hard breakers found in the city roads. You might spot some deers inside and monkeys are a regular scene there, sometimes they scare you too:) When you take your bicycle or ride your two wheeler at a speed of 20-30kmph, with the gentle breeze on your face you tend to wonder if you are in Chennai.

The campus has a school inside, huge grounds wherein literally you can play any sport, swimming pool exclusively for people residing inside and an Open Air Theatre. OAT as it is called would show all new movies in a projected screen and you get to sit relaxed in the grasses and enjoy the movie with your loved ones. And every year IITians host their technical symposium and the cultural events. Of course I never went to the tech symposium and when I went in the final year I participated in the Network games section only to get fired by the IITians in the final round of “Unreal Tournament”. Later some one told me how the IITians play for hours together in their hostel LAN and master every map of the game. But the cultural event is a mega event for all the colleges in Chennai. Almost every engg college student would come and watch the event and enjoy the evening. And apart from the events we go there to check out girls from other colleges…hehe.

I am sure the campus was located in deep outskirts of the city when it started, but now it is a prime area in the city with a two bedroom apartment costing around 1C. Whenever I cross IIT, I always dream of living inside this huge campus, where I can go for a morning jog or probably an evening walk, catch up with friends during the weekend and go around the campus and there are so many other things that can be done peacefully inside. Especially you get to breathe in pure air… I sometimes feel I should have studied hard during my school days and got in to the campus.

National portal

Recently I came across this website: http://india.gov.in/. This is the official Indian government website and to my surprise it has a lot of information about our country. When there is no belief in governance in our country with corrupt politicians and ineffective bureaucrats, this website stands different. The various sections in the website has information about the most common things anyone would like to know about our country.

Information includes various sectors in our country, policies, the constitution, how to file tax (updated to the current revised tax laws), how to apply passport, driving licenses, a webcast section where even the latest budgets is shown as streaming video, local weather (temperature available in celsius and fahrenheit:) ), latest press releases and the list goes on…

Actually this site should have been the one stop for any information pertaining to India but I am sure many prefers Google…:) Content wise the site is pretty neat and organized well and it definitely meets a typical website standards and user experience. What I really appreciate is the effort that has been put in. In a country where we don’t expect things to be in place when it comes to interacting with government, this website stands apart. I guess the website is designed and maintained by National Informatics Centre and they have done a pretty good job. There is even a e-greetings section… 🙂

The man…The movie…The Boss…

The most expected and hyped movie of the tamil film industry was out last friday and it created waves across the globe. With almost every news channel giving special coverage for this movie (some had live coverage from theatres across the country) the excitement increased multifold. I was not interested to go to office at all on that Friday but had no other option. Once I reached I just could not manage to hold my excitement and did not work much for the entire day. I had tickets to watch the movie next day. The pantry in my office had a TV and we just switched on the news channels and kept watching the coverage to hear any latest updates. By noon there were mails coming in giving official reviews about the movie and the excitement went out of control. I was calling all of my friends who had gone to the theatre to watch the first day first show and was getting hourly updates.

Next day the show was at 10.30 at Mayajaal (some 20 KMs outside the city on the ECR). The journey would take some 30 mins only but I started from my home at 8 itself, picked up my friend and reached the theatre early to catch up the festival…:) At 10.30 sharp we were inside the screen 5 of the multiplex and the movie started immediately. They showed the trailer of “Sultan – the warrior”, an animated movie produced by Soundarya Rajinikanth where thalaivar lends his voice for the animated hero. Then came the “S..U..P..E..R….S..T..A..R..” letters in the screen and people went crazy from there on. It was a special show for one of the IT companies in Chennai and it was full of “decent” IT crowd and hence there wasnt too much of shouting in the theatre. My row had more girls than guys and they were quietly watching the movie. The row behind and in front of me had people shouting and I was equally shouting as well whenever there was some dialog or for that matter anything on screen. I am sure the girl who sat next to me would have got pissed off. But who cares?

It was awesome to see thalaivar on screen with different getups. Thalaivar’s intro and the song (Ballaelaka) that followed was not that impressive and didn’t make quite an impact. His intro in CM, Muthu and Baasha were lot better. The first half was a bit slow but it was fun to watch thalaivar’s comedy and romance with shreya. Thalaivar and vivek combination was good and it was hilarious till the interval. Thalaivar and Vivek ottified vadivelu and many others in the first half. There were three songs in total and the “Style…” song was the best among them. Thalaivar came in different looks and his style was awesome in that. With Computer Generated Imagery which made thalaivar as a European with blonde hair and white skin it was a visual treat. In one scene the frame had 6 different getups of thalaivar and it was a wow…truely shankar is the most creative director in tamil.

After the interval the movie was like the high speed mag lev train loaded with crackers. It was a wholesome extravaganza where thalaivars screen presense sent a clear message across the board…He is the ONE and ONLY super star…And then comes the “Adhiradi…” song and it was the best song of the movie. The style, the set, the choreography, thalaivar, shreya, everything was just great in that song. It was total domination by Rajini in the second half where he starts with one rupee and goes to make crores of rupees. Just when you think you are reaching the climax and you feel all the fun is over, the “mottai” boss comes in…Yeah clean shaven thalaivar in “Morpheus” style with a long coat, frenchie and coolers. The next 15 minutes “mottai” just rocked…The way he gets out of the copter, taps his head and with a cunning smile, the way he sends his coolers to the backside of his head…no one can match thalaivar’s style…

The credit goes to Shankar for taking rajini to the next gen audience. Truly shankar has thought about the current generation of audience who are spread across the globe and are adopted to different life styles. He has projected the super star image of rajini to them. Every song is a visual treat…With a full glass pyramid set and a romanian set it clearly shows where most of the money has been spent on…And the Style song shows the star in a blonde hair european look with white skin. The secret behind white super star is a Computer Generated Imagery where they made a white skin lady dance the same steps of super star and then each frame is embossed with the lady’s skin tone. The news said it took one year to finish the job which comes as a 5 minutes song in the movie.

And then Shreya…she looks damn sexy in the movie and unlike other rajini movies she gets a bigger role to play and some importance in the plot. With Sim’s and Jo’s exit, Asin moving to bollywood, shreya has got the right kind of break in her career. Her costumes in the movie are too good and she fits in perfectly except the traditional ones like saree and half saree…:D

Definitely the music and back ground score needs a mention. ARR has done a wonderful job in both. All the songs are good, they did not take the risk of keeping away SPB. For thalaivar SPB needs to sing the opening song and he does it well. The Style song which is a rap, adhiradi which is sung by ARR himself just rocks in the theatre. The punch dialogue song which comes in the background during fight scenes creates the right kind of build up for thalaivar. Sahana sung by udit narayanan, vaaji vaaji by hariharan are on the softer side. The BGM during the fight scenes and during the “mottais” entry are just awesome and adds fuel to the fire.

On the flip side, the stunts could have been better. Anyday “Anniyan” matrix style fight, “Mudhalvan” fight scenes are better than this one. Also shankar’s previous movies had a better plot and there were a lot of substantial reasoning behind his plot. To project super star’s image he has let down the plot. In 60 seconds the entire black money becomes white. Sure this wouldn’t have been the case in his previous movies. He would have shown enough scenes which would explain how it is possible. Probably he could have cut down a bit on the first half with all those “Pazhagalam” scenes and taken the story more seriously.

Over all its a unusual festival season for tamil nadu and a treat for all rajini fans and rajini movie lovers. Though it doesnt look like a shankar film, all the credit goes to him for showing the star some 20 years younger and taking him to the next gen audience. The movie has broken many records in terms of box office collection and it satisfies everyone…needless to mention AVM too with an estimated total collection of 150Cr.

When things go wrong…

…they go wrong left, right and center. After I was sick for about 5 days, it was just two more days (the weekend) for me to head back to the place I hate the most. Yes you heard it, its my aapeece…So I planned to go for one S.Ve.Shekar drama so that I have some jokes to remember to pass at least one week at office. The drama was on Sunday evening at 7 and me and my friend, just two of us were planning to watch it. So after a strong after noon nap, I decided to go to my friends place at around 5 in the evening, probably do a little bit shopping and then go to the drama.

I reached my friends place at 4.45 and then we drove to the infamous renganathan street area thorugh couple of one ways(hehe). One good one way is where things started to take shape(!). There was a different movement in the vehicle. I was telling my friend “machi aadadha da, road vera galeej-a irukku”. He refused any acts of dancing in the vehicle. So we just stopped the vehicle and had a look at the back tyre. Yes, back tyre punctured. Without further thought we started to push the vehicle. And we were in middle of the shopping area, t.nagar on a sunday evening and it is difficult to find a mechanic. Few more steps and it occured to us that the tube would get punctured more if we keep going like this. So we stopped the vehicle and got in to the arduous task of “aaniya pudungaradhu”. Five minutes with the help of the kit in my vechile and some dirty looks of passer bys we got hold of the root cause of the entire mission. Yes, instantly we became the proud owner of “aani”.

Now what? Nothing, keep pushing the vehicle and ask couple of auto wallas about near by mechanic shops. One says go straight and take left, next one says left wouldnt be open take right. “Dei, naanga enna jolly ride-a poittu irukkom? ooru suthi paarkaradhukku?”. “Okka makka, we have to push some 135Kgs + some 160Kgs”.(technical details: 135Kgs is the dead weight of the bike. 160 Kgs is the combined weight of the duo.) Now two more technocrats join the journey. Both of them say that the mouth of the tube would get damaged if u continue to the shop like this. We were (are!) engineers and we dont listen to such comments. So we kept on going till we got tired and couldnt find any more mechanic shop. So we quietly parked the vehicle and started walking towards T.Nagar bustand and found one shop.

Just when that guy agreed to come with us, he spotted an auto on the way and convinced the auto guy and us to use the auto to go to the site! Since we were tired we agreed to the idea. We reached the spot where the bike is parked and he takes the back wheel out. Back in auto we headed back to the shop so that he can fix the tube. He takes the tube out of the tyre and shows me a damaged mouth!!! Mouth poidum nnu vaai vecha maga janangalae…unga vaayila theeya vekka….but polambi enna panradhu….? The mechanic says replacing the tube is the only option. The vehicle is just 3 months old and when I purchased it, the showroom guy said the tube is called tuff-up tube wherein it has got a solution inside such that whenever tube gets punctured the solution would come out and close the damaged area so that further damage doesnt happen. But adhukkana arigurigalae kaanum…Mechanic just kaari thuppied when I mentioned it. He said its just a marketing idea and how can a liquid be present inside and all those…

By the time when we came back to our spot and got the vehicle ready after paying some 350Rs for the tube + labor + auto it was 7.30 and happily we missed the drama. Since I have come to T.Nagar I thought I would at least shop for something. Another hour spent and we went back to the friend’s place calling it the day and were just chatting. I was just playing (Seriously…I was just adjusting it for the right position) with the helmet lock in my vehicle and 30 seconds it came in my hand. Yeah it broke. Okay great, start the vehicle and head to the helmet shop in mount road. 10 mins of riding the bike at 80KMPH I reached the place and was happy to see the shop open. When enquired the shop owner said billing counter is closed and asked us to come the next day. Go to next shop to find that he has a helmet lock for the newer version of my bike. All right take a U-turn and head back to friends place to drop him and without any further delay (which would increase the chances of other parts of my bike breaking) I just started to my home.

Just when I was about to park my vehicle I noticed that there was another vehicle (Splendor) kept on the way. When I somehow managed to sqeeze in, my rear tyre just touched the other vehicle and it started making some sounds. I just ignored and parked my vehicle and went to close the gate when I happen to touch the vehicle. Thats it, it started making louder sounds and I could sense some people looking out of their windows. In a normal situation I would have got a lot embarrased but now I was too tired for those. “Ada pongada” nnu I just climbed up and called it for the day. I mean ate nicely and slept off…

Oru drama paakaradhukku aasai pattadhu ivvalavu periya thappa…? Illa one way la varravangala pudikkaradhukku time illama namma city police dhaan indha madhiri oru aani sprinkling strategy la erangittangala…?